As a teen-ager, Van Porter called tap-dancing "sissified." Only eight years later, he's one of the field's rising stars. What turned everything around? An electrifying performance by the Third Generation Steps, an acrobatic tap troupe led by tap master Maceo Anderson. "It blew me away," Porter says, "because the audience loved it, I loved it, they got a standing ovation, and there was so much excitement that I knew right then that that's what I wanted to do."

The cost of doing business for commercial vehicle operators and owners who flout parking laws may be about to increase. The Los Angeles City Council voted Friday to crack down on commercial vehicles that stop or park, attended or unattended, on a bridge, and those that park on any public street for more than three hours. Violators will receive tickets and be subject to tow.

A doctor tapping into a patient's vein does not always come up with the perfect hit. So it went Saturday at Orange Coast College's Robert B. Moore Theatre, where the Southern California Tap Festival culminated a week of celebrating tap dancing.

A doctor tapping into a patient's vein does not always come up with the perfect hit. So it went Saturday at Orange Coast College's Robert B. Moore Theatre, where the Southern California Tap Festival culminated a week of celebrating tap dancing.

The cost of doing business for commercial vehicle operators and owners who flout parking laws may be about to increase. The Los Angeles City Council voted Friday to crack down on commercial vehicles that stop or park, attended or unattended, on a bridge, and those that park on any public street for more than three hours. Violators will receive tickets and be subject to tow.

Talk about fast-moving feet. This weekend, the UCLA Center for the Performing Arts sponsors "Jazz on Tap," a multi-generational lineup of tap artists performing everything from traditional jazz favorites to trendy hip-hop. Artistic director and master of ceremonies Cholly Atkins, best known as the creator of Motown-style dancing and as half of the tap duo Coles & Atkins, has brought together a talented group of dancers.

With his wild, windmill arms and firecracker bursts of energy, Van Porter brings an unpredictable contemporary edge to tap dancing--and to the curiously sedate "Jazz on Tap" revue that opened Thursday at the Wadsworth Theater in Westwood. A student of Maceo Anderson (one of the original Four Step Brothers), Porter can keep the sound of his tapping scratchy and loose: sand-dancing without the sand.

Ethnic ratios may be changed at 21 San Fernando Valley schools in order to accommodate more minority students from crowded schools in East Los Angeles, Hollywood and other parts of Los Angeles, the school board announced Monday. The Los Angeles district now tries to maintain a 60% minority-40% Anglo ratio at most of its schools. Courts that monitor district activities have approved the 60%-40% ratio as meeting desegregation goals.

Jester Hairston ran naked yelling 'Bwana, bwana!" through more Tarzan movies than he cared to remember. He had to lose his Boston accent to win long-running roles on the radio and television versions of "Amos 'n' Andy," a classic show eventually run off the air because of objections over its demeaning depictions of blacks. Later he played the wisecracking Rolly Forbes on the 1980s sitcom "Amen."

As a teen-ager, Van Porter called tap-dancing "sissified." Only eight years later, he's one of the field's rising stars. What turned everything around? An electrifying performance by the Third Generation Steps, an acrobatic tap troupe led by tap master Maceo Anderson. "It blew me away," Porter says, "because the audience loved it, I loved it, they got a standing ovation, and there was so much excitement that I knew right then that that's what I wanted to do."

Northwest San Fernando Valley residents will get their first chance tonight to tell city officials what they think of a proposed $2-billion residential and commercial development in the Porter Ranch area of Chatsworth. The Porter Ranch Development Co., which is run by Beverly Hills builder Nathan Shapell, is proposing 2,195 single-family houses, 800 condominiums and about 7.

Voting for what they called a known quantity, the Los Angeles Board of Education Monday appointed former board member Tom Bartman to temporarily fill the West Valley seat vacated last month when David Armor resigned. The board also voted to permit 28 schools, mostly in the San Fernando Valley and the Westside, to raise their percentage of minority students to 70% and let their white enrollment drop to 30%.